4

Hermione POV

The next morning, while Sarah was in the shower, I stole over to her bag, pulling out her Potions textbook, our first class of the day. I rapped my wand on the book, intending to turn all of the text invisible, but it didn't work. "Oh, so you charm your books, do you? Clever," I breathed. "But not clever enough…Diffindo!" I slowly cut into each binding of her books, intending for only the slightest bit of wear and tear to fully break them. How would she fare if she had to keep track of 400 pages for each class? Smirking to myself, I grabbed my bag and went down to meet the boys.

OoOoOoO

"Morning," I said brightly, sitting next to Ron and giving myself a helping of toast.

"Why are you so cheery this morning?" Ron grumbled slightly. He was definitely not a morning person, but his sour mood today couldn't bring me down. I kept picturing Sarah's face when her book would break and had to fight down sniggers.

"No reason," I said lightly, but Harry caught on.

"Did you mess with that Wimkil girl again?" He asked, looking far too happy himself this morning. I felt my face turn slightly pink.

"No! Well, only a little. You'll see." I said mischievously, feeling my mood lighten further. This was going to be good.

"Whatever, come on, we have to go to Potions with that git Snape," Ron yawned, and we left together. As I was sitting down in Potions, I noticed Sarah already had her things out, talking with her friends. I eyed the neat stack of books and notes on her desk and an even better idea popped into my head. What if I just…took her books…then she'd really be in trouble…

"Sit down, books out." Snape snapped, banishing the thought from my head for the time being as he swept into the classroom. "Page 34. We'll be learning the brimstone fire technique today. Take notes." He started, smacking the blackboard with his wand to make our notes appear there. He immediately started lecturing, but I ignored him and looked out of the corner of my eye at Sarah. She opened her book and….CRACK. The binding cracked all the way up, and some of the papers slid to the floor in a heap. Perfect!

"Oh my gosh!" I heard her whisper quietly, in a panicked state of despair, snatching the pages off the floor. She restacked them frantically, having to catch more pages as they slid off the stack. I barely fought down my giggles.

"What's wrong? Merlin, what happened to your book? I thought you actually bought new this year." Luke whispered, tacking a handful of the pages. I started snickering quietly, pink in the face from keeping myself from laughing out loud. Harry looked at me and sighed, going back to taking notes.

"I did! I don't understand, I even charmed them to increase their wear protection! This couldn't have happened…unless…" Her face turned a furious shade of pink as she raised her head to glare at me, finally understanding. I smirked, finally fighting down the giggles and went back to taking notes, deep satisfaction lightening my mood further…

Sarah POV

"Ok, this has gone too far," Danielle ranted, trying to keep up with me as I stalked angrily out of the dungeons. "Go tell McGonagall that she's harassing you. Something." I glared at Granger as she flounced by, looking as if the whole world was just dandy. I reached for my wand unconsciously, but Luke slapped my hand away from it, giving me a look. We had a silent battle for a moment before I walked on.

"Hell no," I snorted, my anger making me walk faster. "I'm not giving her that satisfaction. Besides, I've already done stuff to her too; I'd just get in trouble." I thought longingly of hexing her now, realizing that her friends would tattle faster than a Firebolt could go.

"Maybe that's what should be done to keep you two from killing each other." Luke suggested, but I had suddenly stopped, palling, wondering if she had done it to all my other books-

"I need Spellotape, and time for some Bonding Charms. She might have gone after all my books, not just one." I panicked, digging into my bag, examining all the bindings. None of them seemed broken, but I hadn't even noticed that my Potions textbook was cracked.

"Sarah, relax. You can do it tonight, I know that you're ahead on your homework. We'll go for a walk on the grounds, and you can be at peace. Seriously, you need a night off. I don't want you plotting anyway." Luke insisted.

So we did just that. I made sure to take all of my school things with me, and we went for a walk on the edge of the Quidditch Pitch. I settled down and started the slow process of Spellotaping my books back together, talking with Luke, watching the first training match of the season go underway for the Gryffindors. As much as I hated to admit it, the Gryffindor team didn't look like much. Even though I didn't care for (or understand) Quidditch at all, I could tell that our team this year was very poor. "You know, I should have tried out for Chaser," Luke was saying, absentmindedly pulling at blades of grass as he watched the practice.

"Then why didn't you?" I asked, sealing my binding back together with a complicated little charm, Spellotaping it too for good measure. Luke shrugged, flopping onto his back, letting his messy blond hair cover some of his face. "Pff, seriously, Luke, if you want something, you have to go after it. Why do you think I'm so nerdy?" I sighed, and he laughed.

"You are nerdy, Merlin knows you're nerdy," he chuckled, and I threw a ball of Spellotape at his head.

"Oi!" He barked in mock anger, bolting up, but frowning at something past me. "Why is Slytherin here?" He asked, and I turned. We were pretty close to the stands, and filling the front row was the Slytherin Quidditch team. They all had nasty looks on their faces, but I honestly couldn't summon the emotion to care. The Gryffindor team could handle itself.

"They shouldn't be able to watch practices like that." I supplied thoughtlessly, and frowned, going back to my book, testing the binding, frowning deeper when I thought about Granger. She had found away around my protective charms, which I had been pretty confident in. What if she was smarter than me? I was constantly working to be where I was. How easily could she overthrow me?

"Gryffindors are losers, Gryffindors are losers!" The Slytherin's started to chant.

"That is so pathetic," Luke snorted, falling back onto his back, but frowning as the chant only got louder. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the members of the Gryffindor team start to falter under the pressure.

"Ignore it. Hey, did you finish Inanimatus Conjurus for McGonagall yet?" Making forced conversation, I hit my book harder than necessary with another spell as the chant got louder. Luke looked at me, rolled his eyes, and flopped back down. The chant wasn't aimed at me, but I felt like it was. With Granger going at me and me going at her, I had started to doubt myself. Learning was all I had ever been good at, and when someone was trying to trip me up, it was a lot of stress. Plus, my unusually high temper lately wasn't helping.

"Nope." Luke savored the word, and I laughed softly, but then almost growled in irritation as the chant got louder yet. Luke made a noise between a grunt and a laugh. The chant got louder and louder until I felt my patience snap completely.

"Ok, that's enough." I got up, tucking my book under my arm and marched around to the bottom of the stands when the chant got louder yet. Anger that I usually never felt bubbled up inside me until I was itching to draw my wand and start hexing.

"Sarah…?" Luke called, just realizing that I had gotten up. He started to jog after me, but I yelled at the Slytherin's before he got a chance to stop me.

"Hey, pikeys!" I shouted up into the stands, attracting their attention. "Sod off!" I glared up at them as they stopped chanting, distracted.

"Go read a book, nerd!" One of them jeered.

"Yeah, it's not bothering you, Mudblood!" Another one barked, and they all laughed darkly in agreement, leering at me.

"Let it go," Luke advised instantly, pulling up besides me, but I whipped out my wand anyway. No one called me a Mudblood. It was a dirty and cruel aspersion that made me see red.

"It's annoying, immature, and it only shows how much of a toerag you all are. Now, naff off!" I shouted, moving to enter the stands, but Luke caught my arm. We glared at each other for a second, mine daring him to stop me, his fierce.

"Go back to Gryffindor and pick on Granger for us!" Malfoy shouted down and interrupted us, and that's when I lost it. I must have sent ten strong hexes at them before Luke forced my wand tip down after a scuffle; Luke fought to seize my wrist and I fought his grip. With yelps of fear and surprise, the Slytherin team had to duck fast to avoid my spells, cursing all the while.

"What are you doing?" Luke hissed. "Why would you let them get to you like that? You've never hexed someone before!" Some of his words were drowned out by some raucous applause from the Weasley twins up in the air, who were cheering me on. I went to hex the Slytherin Team again as their heads poked back up. I got a few more at them until Luke wrestled my wand down again.

"Because I'm sick and tired of people only seeing me as competition with Granger! And that chant was despicable, and they shouldn't have been in the stands." I said with satisfaction as I watched them leave, shooting me dirty looks. I would have rather seen the Slytherin Quidditch Team in the Hospital Wing, not the Quidditch Pitch. I tried to pull away from Luke, annoyed that he had stopped me, but he didn't let go.

"You know that they'll try and get you back for this." Luke said, almost a threat but I pulled out of his grasp, scowling. It wasn't his place to babysit me.

"I'd like to see them try, I'd hex their arses before they could even think of a jinx." I said somewhat bitterly before stalking away and thankfully Luke didn't follow me.

Luke POV

Concerned, I stayed in the stands, watching Sarah get smaller and smaller until she disappeared inside Hogwarts. I needed to talk to Hermione Granger's friends. Somehow, this had to end; I was tired of Sarah being snippy lately because of Granger. She had always been pretty meek- obviously a pushover, and I hated her new attitude. With the Slytherin's gone, the Gryffindors practiced for awhile, but when Weasley and Potter were walking out of the changing room the sun hadn't set yet. "Hey, can I talk to you guys a minute?" I asked, and they exchanged looks before coming over and sitting in the stands next to me. "Well, hey, I'm Luke." I introduced myself, then immediately felt stupid. Weasley wouldn't stop staring at me, and he had always freaked me out. Plus, I had only been annoyed with Harry Potter since our very first day. I wanted to speak with them for as little time as possible.

"Ron," said Weasley.

"Harry," Harry Potter introduced himself, which I found kind of funny, considering everyone knew him. But hey, whatever. Personally, I hated him, but at least he was polite when he wasn't claiming murders and yelling at teachers.

"Ok, do you know what is wrong with Hermione? Because I'm still trying to figure out why Sarah is acting so…strange." I summed up lamely. Granger had started it after all- it was mostly her fault.

"Well…Hermione is just really competitive. I think." Harry said slowly, as if he was just thinking about it.

"Yeah," Agreed Ron with a frown. I nearly snorted with laughter. These two apparently weren't too gifted in the brains department.

"Which is weird, because Sarah isn't. She's…ok, well, here's the deal." I made up my mind to try to portray Sarah in the best way possible, because even me, her friend, could admit: she came off as a bitch a lot. "Sarah's parents are Muggles, but they are scary-weird perfectionists. Even though she doesn't have normal classes, they still check up on her grades. They only had Sarah so that she'd be perfect. She's just under a lot of pressure, she's always been trying to be perfect. But you can tell that's not what she wants." Both guys blinked, obviously I had either scared them off or surprised them with the fact that I could actually think about and comprehend women.

"Well, Hermione is kinda weird about homework sometimes…?" Ron almost asked Harry, but Harry just shrugged.

"Ok, so both of them are kind of obsessed with being successful, right? Maybe if they realize how alike they are, maybe they'll stop trying to kill each other." I sighed. I could see that talking to these two was a mistake; we weren't going to get anything done.

"What are you suggesting?" Ron asked, and I shrugged.

"I don't know! I mean, Danielle is more of a friend to Sarah, they're both girls, I'm not a girl. I don't know." I said hopelessly. Getting into a girl's mind was basically impossible. "But I know that this has to stop. I've never seen Sarah loose her temper like that and start hexing people, I don't want her to do that to Hermione."

"Yeah, I mean, what Hermione is doing…it's kind of freaking us out. Hermione's never really been competitive with anyone before except for Sarah. It's not like her. But how do we get them to stop? If one of them does something, the other just retaliates." Harry started, and by the end, he was almost flushing. I mentally applauded him for expressing a complete thought.

"I honestly don't know. I'll talk to Danielle about it…and I'll try to talk to Sarah again. But I can't make any promises."


A/N: A 'pikey', the insult Sarah used, is the British word for 'white trash'. It would be double the insult to me because she called purebloods that, wouldn't you say? Oh, and 'naff off' is just another way to say 'sod off' which means 'fuck off'. Clear as mud? Awesome. This has been one of the author's many attempts to assimilate to British culture.